Creating the Perception of a Product, Brand or Company Identity

Positioning

Trout and Ries

Summary of Positioning. Abstract

Jack Trout (1969)

Al Ries

Positioning (Pos.)
is a marketing method for creating the perception of a product, brand, or company identity.
Beginning in 1969 (the term
was coined in a paper by Jack Trout:
Pos. is a game people play in today’s me-too market place,
Industrial Marketing, Vol.54, No.6, June 1969, pp.51-55)
two young marketing guys, Jack Trout and Al Ries, wrote, spoke and
disseminated to the advertising and PR world about a new concept in
communications called positioning. Their 1981 book on Pos.: The
Battle for Your Mind became a
bestseller. Until then, agencies had primarily been basing their media
campaigns on internally conceived benefits of the client's
product.

According to Trout and Ries,
"Pos. is not what you do to a product. Pos. is what you do
to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position (place) the product
in the mind of the prospect". Since that time in marketing, Pos. is the technique in which marketers try to create an image or identity
for a product, brand, or company in the perception of the target
market. What matters is how potential buyers see the
product. It is expressed relative to the position of competitors.
Typical Pos. tools include graphical perception mapping,
market surveys, and certain statistical techniques.